SageMath

The first version of SageMath was released on 24 February 2005 as free and open-source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2, with the initial goals of creating an "open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica, and MATLAB". The originator and leader of the SageMath project, William Stein, was a mathematician at the University of Washington.

SageMath uses a syntax resembling Python's, supporting procedural, functional, and object-oriented constructs.

Development

Stein realized when designing Sage that there were many open-source mathematics software packages already written in different languages, namely C, C++, Common Lisp, Fortran and Python.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, Sage (which is written mostly in Python and Cython) integrates many specialized CAS software packages into a common interface, for which a user needs to know only Python. However, Sage contains hundreds of thousands of unique lines of code adding new functions and creating the interfaces among its components.

SageMath uses both students and professionals for development. The development of SageMath is supported by both volunteer work and grants. However, it was not until 2016 that the first full-time Sage developer was hired (funded by an EU grant). The same year, Stein described his disappointment with a lack of academic funding and credentials for software development, citing it as the reason for his decision to leave his tenured academic position to work full-time on the project in a newly founded company, SageMath Inc.